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Workers with the West Side Heroin and Opioid Task Force, set up a table near Roosevelt Road and South Albany Avenue on the West Side to provide people with Narcan Nasal Spray, 0.4mg/ml of Naloxone and syringes to treat drug overdoses, Thursday morning, Sept. 23, 2021.

Workers with the West Side Heroin and Opioid Task Force, set up a table near Roosevelt Road and South Albany Avenue on the West Side to provide people with Narcan Nasal Spray, 0.4mg/ml of Naloxone and syringes to treat drug overdoses, Thursday morning, Sept. 23, 2021. The agency also provides people with | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Ashlee Rezin

Workers with the West Side Heroin and Opioid Task Force, set up a table near Roosevelt Road and South Albany Avenue on the West Side to provide people with Narcan Nasal Spray, 0.4mg/ml of Naloxone and syringes to treat drug overdoses, Thursday morning, Sept. 23, 2021.

Workers with the West Side Heroin and Opioid Task Force, set up a table near Roosevelt Road and South Albany Avenue on the West Side to provide people with Narcan Nasal Spray, 0.4mg/ml of Naloxone and syringes to treat drug overdoses, Thursday morning, Sept. 23, 2021. The agency also provides people with | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Ashlee Rezin

What can be done to address Xylazine usage and the opioid crisis?

Xylazine has been linked to 350 overdose deaths in Cook County.

Workers with the West Side Heroin and Opioid Task Force, set up a table near Roosevelt Road and South Albany Avenue on the West Side to provide people with Narcan Nasal Spray, 0.4mg/ml of Naloxone and syringes to treat drug overdoses, Thursday morning, Sept. 23, 2021. The agency also provides people with | Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times

Ashlee Rezin

   

Public health and drug enforcement officials are raising alarms about a veterinary tranquilizer known as Xylazine.

Reset hears how the substance is impacting the opioid epidemic, what health and community organizers are doing to address the ongoing crisis, and why Medicaid recipients are often missing out on essential drug treatment.

GUESTS: Matt Kiefer, digital editor for WBEZ

Dr. David Ansell, professor of medicine at Rush University Medical Center and author of The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills

Lindsay Allen, health economist and assistant professor in Northwest, Vauna Hernandez, executive director of Phoenix House.

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